Why Zambia
There is an Africa that mass circuits have not yet reached. Zambia, landlocked in the heart of the continent, is the best example of this: twice the size of France, with a population of less than 20 million, crossed by the Zambezi River which rushes down the most spectacular waterfalls on the planet. It is here that the modern safari was born, sixty years ago, when a guide named Norman Carr had the revolutionary idea of leaving the vehicle at the camp and walking in the bush.
This Zambia can be felt from the first morning in the South Luangwa National Park: no convoys of 4x4s piled up around a lion, no GPS location sharing apps between competing lodges. Just a guide, a silent tracker, the red clay of the valley under the soles, and somewhere in the thickets, the breath of a leopard. The feeling of gentle vulnerability is precious: it reminds us that we are in nature, and that nature is not a setting.
Zambia has to be earned. The flight is not direct, the roads of the parks are sometimes difficult, the top-of-the-range camps have a price consistent with their uniqueness. But those who make this path invariably come back marked: by the night spent in a tree watching hippos, by the canoe down the Zambezi between the emerged backs of the hippos, by the 10 million bats that fly to Kasanka like a living cloud at sunset.
